31 October 2017

HOW TO PLAN A HARRY POTTER BIRTHDAY PARTY

A few weeks back the kiddo turned seven! wow how did that even happen?! I had promised myself that I would go all out this time for his Harry Potter Birthday Party, as one last hoorah before being a big brother and having to share us a little. To be honest I think I got reeaaaaaallllly into making it a super special day and spent hours making props and details to bring his Harry Potter Party to life.
I did a few Instagram stories showing the invite I designed and had a few people email to ask if I would write a post to show what is was like and almost a bit of a 'How to make a Harry Potter Party' list of ideas and resources so if you're not a huge fan, like Felix, then apologies in advance!

As we had only read the first three books I didn't want to include anything he didn't recognise so I spent a good few hours of researching ideas on Pinterest before setting out a plan. The main things Felix wanted to include was: Ollivanders Wand Shop, Quidditch, Sirius Black from the third book, Owl Post, the House Cup and the Great hall. Hmm small order you say!

First off we chose a venue in Bristol that was affordable and had a feel of the great hall, due to some super impressive stained glass windows. Once that was organised I set to work transforming the village hall into Hogwarts with a few simple ideas.

HOGWARTS EXPRESS
For me the adventure starts with the Hogwarts Express, so I designed party invitations based on the Hogwarts train ticket. I spent quote a while trying to recreate the perfect hogwarts express ticket beofre printing them out and han cutting the shapes. However if you wanted to create a digital version to email out instead you could use an invitation maker like Adobe Spark for free.

Next I used the old car sponge, bed sheet and paint to create the wall on Platform 9 3/4, cutting the sponge to roughly resemble the shape of bricks and stamping it to get a wall effect. I cut a slit up the sheet so the children could pass through to Hogwarts, they loved this and some children even brought their tickets along with them.

OLLIVANDERS WAND SHOP
We decided to skip on hiring an entertainer as they can be pricey and instead run games and craft activities for the kids. We started off with a visit to Ollivanders Wand Shop! Every good Witch & Wizard needs a wand right.

To make the wands I bought some dowel wood from Hobbycraft and using a glue gun designed random patterns of a handle and other details before letting them dry and painting them various shades of brown and black. Once dried these looked great and certainly got Felix's approval.

I painted my own sign based on the film to stick above the table and each child got to choose a packaged wand, each containing a magical core of either a Phoenix feather, dragon heart string, unicorn tail hair. The wands were wrapped up in parcel paper tied with string and I printed off an Ollivander Wand shop stamp and Swish and Flick Wand Receipt and a wand core label so the children could pick out their favourite.

I decorated the table with a few potions bottles and wooden craft stars I had left over, a big book of Spells and a spider garland that I picked up from the Halloween section at HomeSense, where there are so many spooky things!

HOGWARTS GAMES
First up we created a craft table so all the kids could decorate their wands with magic (glitter), this was fab as all the children enjoyed getting messy and we labelled them up as they dried.

Next we used the sorting hat to divide the children into the four houses and took two houses each to different activity areas. The first played a match of Quidditch using two large hula hoops I'd sprayed gold using this tutorial and we they used juggling balls with their brooms. Each hoop a different house point.

The second group played Pin the Lightening Bolt on the Harry while blindfolded. Depending how close the scar was to is forehead meant how many points you got. I used a Harry Potter PDF (see resources at the bottom on the post) and printed it onto A1 paper to stick to the wall and just filled in the top of his head with a marker pen.

We then played musical wands A.K.A musical statues, which went down a treat with the kids! The final children left standing collected points for the their Hogwarts house.HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WIZARD? PHOTO BOOTH
Felix is a bit of a fan of Sirius Black I mean he can transform in to a giant dog after all! Before dinner we decided to create a little photo booth action with the Polaroid camera to add to their goodie bags at the end.

I created this backdrop of wanted posters using photocopied PDF (see the resources below) and stuck them together on a large sheet of A1 paper. I then printed a Have You Seen This Wizard Poster and Sirius Black's Azkaban number, mounting both for the children to pose with. Each child pulled a scary face as we snapped away. This was super easy to do and the kids LOVED it!

I used these Poster pics which you can download and this poster frame, which you can find on the pinterest board below.

THE CAKE

I set up the Harry Potter Birthday cake table, using gold paper table cover, cupcakes with edible Harry Potter sugar paper and my homemade version of this cake. I cheated by using to pre-made sponges and ready roll icing and then proceeded to try and copy and cut out all the elements to make the Harry Potter Cake. Not bad ay! Also this totally saved on time too.

OWL POST PARTY BAGS
After the everyone sat in their houses to eat their dinner and had one last dance around the hall, slowly parents arrived to collect their children. Before they left we made sure each child stopped off at the Owl Post Office where they could collect their party bags!

Inside each brown paper parcel tied with string and an owl feather, were a selection of HoneyDukes Sweets that we made from jelly beans, liquorice sticks, popping candy and flying saucers. I designed my own labels using canva and printed it onto label paper for easy packaging.

We styled the table using empty boxes as props with letters to Harry Potter attached and this rather fine looking owl to give it an authentic feel. The children also picked up their crafted wand and Wanted Polaroid from the earlier in the party before heading home.

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We ended the party on an absolute high and had such fun creating the world of Hogwarts for Felix. We have told him though that next year will be a slightly smaller event ;)

HARRY POTTER PRINTABLE RESOURCES
I have added all the Print outs to a dedicated Harry Potter Board on Pinterest so you should be able to click on the image and save it to your desk top to print and use.

I know this is slightly different from my usual posts but hope you enjoyed it! Why not pin the below image to save for later.